The Palace of Chávarri, Mojácar Playa

The Palace of Cháverri, as it was grandly known, is now the front bit of a huge box-like hotel in Marina de la Torre, run by the Fergus Hotel group and called the Hotel Alegría Palacio. Mojácar has succumbed to cheap all-inclusive tourism.
In another time, the palace was a summer-home owned by a wealthy Madrid family called Garrigues-Walker. Old Dad - Antonio - was the Spanish ambassador to the United States in the early sixties, later moving to a fresh posting at the ambassador's residence at the Vatican. His wife Helen was from Des Moines in Iowa and at least one of their nine children, Joaquín, was a regular visitor to Mojácar who, as a story in the Voz de Almería notes, spent his honeymoon with his wife Mercedes there (pictured here with the staff in attendance).
An American friend called Zach Allen stayed with Joaquín in 1956 and sent me the picture below. He writes: '...Recently, I turned to Google Earth and see some of the changes.  The "Palacio" itself was very rudimentary when I was there.  But, beautiful.  At that time, it was a tomato farm.  I have a number of photos showing the house, the fields and the (women mainly) workers who were planting the tomatoes then.  It used a gravity fed irrigation system fed from a very large pool, much like a swimming pool, on the hill in back of the house. The view from the stairway, out through the open (not enclosed like today) archway down the road to the beach was stunning...'.

The house was built by the first Marquis de Chávarri (Benigno Chávarri y Salazar), who owned a shipping line. His captains were (apparently) instructed to fire off a cannon salute from their ships as they navigated past the estate on the way to or from the port of Garrucha.
Good times. Mojácar was so far away from the cities, so hard to get to, that many used to come by sea.